My friend has a hamster. Not one of those fat, ginger things that you can put in a ball and laugh as it scuttles around the room, smashing into the coffee table again and again. No, this hamster is not cuddly and soft, it doesn’t rush to the bars of the cage waiting to be stroked or picked up, it is no ordinary hamster.

His name is Henry, he is white with an electric black stripe running right down his back and he is about three inches long. He scrambles through his tube, backwards and forwards from his food bowl to his bed, and every so often he will stop in his tracks and turn his little beady black eyes on you. And you know that he is thinking something sinister, that running through his pea-sized brain is a plan… a plan to escape and kill you while you lay sound asleep in your bed.

Henry stares at you, and you stare right back afraid to move or even breathe… and then he blinks and he continues on his journey. Through the tube to the food bowl and then back again…

Henry lives in the kitchen and, sometimes when it is quiet in the house and the television is down low, you can hear him in his cage, plotting and planning and nibbling the bars. Once, my friend tried to pick him up from his cage and he gave her a triumphant look before he leaped straight from between her fingers, and disappeared from sight in less than a second. It took three of us to locate him and put him back in his cage. He put up quite a fight- scurrying away on his four legs like a furry spider. And you just know that he is waiting for another chance, waiting for some unsuspecting victim to reach into his cage and pluck him into the world again so that he might have a second chance at freedom.

Even the cat is scared of Henry, she runs away from the cage and refuses to go near him. So all of you parents out there who have a child nagging you for a pet hamster, just remember these words of warning…. give a hamster an inch, and he will take over the world!